


Cellies

by gwyneth rhys (gwyneth), RenneMichaels



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Fluff, Gen, Imprisonment, Inspired by Art, Magic, Pajamas & Sleepwear, Peculiar Cellmates, Pranks and Practical Jokes, WinterFrost - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-19 19:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18976705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwyneth/pseuds/gwyneth%20rhys, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RenneMichaels/pseuds/RenneMichaels
Summary: Rolling his eyes, Stark said, “Whatever. I’m decidedly unthrilled about Goth Barbie and Murderbot Ken being in such close proximity, and such close proximity to me. What happens if he decides to whammy this one?” and he pointed at Bucky.





	Cellies

 

 

**Day 1**

Wherever they were taking Bucky, it was deep underground; his ears popped just before the elevator came to a halt. The Iron Man pushed him forward into a gleaming white hall with small blue lights embedded everywhere: security, monitors. Warnings. Fury, Hill, and Romanov trailed behind at a wary distance, though he didn’t know what they thought he might do with these magnetic shackles on and Stark in his suit, the SHIELD gang with their six-guns trained on the back of his skull. They had vastly overestimated his capabilities, somehow, even though he’d tried to explain himself when he’d thrown himself on their mercy.

Not to mention, this was exactly where he wanted to be.

He’d been bouncing around the world for long enough, eventually reaching the conclusion that he had too many problems in his present condition, and he needed Steve’s help. If the fool had been willing to die to yank Bucky Barnes out of the black depths of the Winter Soldier, he’d be willing to help with tasks far less fraught and deadly—the problem was, Steve had been nowhere to be found. They had constantly crisscrossed each other’s paths; as soon as Bucky figured out Steve’s newest location, Steve would be heading for Bucky’s last known sighting, and then when Bucky finally decided to stay put, Steve simply...vanished. So Bucky’d changed tactics and gone after Steve’s cronies. A little research had turned up Fury’s top lieutenant, Maria Hill, working for the company of one of Steve’s Avengers team, identifying her as easier than almost anyone else for the fearsome Soldier to contact. She had another advantage: Hill was the only one from DC he hadn’t personally tried to kill, so points for that.

Steve’s SHIELD squad hated Hydra as much as Bucky did, which meant the “enemy of my enemy” line bought him better treatment than he probably deserved. They chose to park him somewhere in the Avengers building under lock and key till Steve got back and they could wash their hands of him. Which would have been perfect, really, except that as he entered his little plexiglas cage, he saw he had company: a tall, angular guy with long dark hair and keen blue eyes, wearing an impeccable black suit, forest green shirt, and an emerald and gold tie. A guy who looked like he’d somehow seen less sunlight than Bucky had for the past seventy years. He was watching all of this with a predatory avidity, and it made Bucky’s skin crawl.

He might not have turned himself in if he’d known about the company. Even if the guy wasn’t Hydra, it wasn’t safe for anyone to be around him. The two of them eyeballed each other.

A new guy joined the Avengers party, short and with salt-and-pepper curly hair, glasses. This was Banner, Bucky thought, the one who turned into the giant green monster. He seemed to have an interesting effect on the other prisoner; the guy almost cringed and his mouth flattened in a tight line. Something clicked into place: this entire floor was designed to keep the monster contained, or at least slow him down. Park him for safekeeping while they waited for him to change. Bucky had a feeling that not much could keep the monster contained, but that was also why Banner had joined them down here: they wanted their bad-guy guests aware someone far more dangerous was around.

“Steve’s gonna have conniptions when he gets back and finds out his bae’s been locked up in Avengers pokey,” Stark said as his face mask flipped up. He did look a little like his father, now Bucky was seeing him in person. What little he remembered about Howard, anyway.

Fury turned to him, absolutely icy cool. “Allow me to shed one perfect tear out of my one good eye.” Hill and Romanov kept their focus on the far wall, trying valiantly not to snicker, failing.

“I’m just saying. This is not what I built this for—it was a _temporary_ place to park bad guys until SHIELD could take them off our poorly equipped hands, but then you and Legs McSlinky here”—he gestured at Hill—“had to throw in with Captain StickUpHisAss and La Femme Nikita to blow that all to hell.”

Fury responded with a cheerless, mocking laugh. “You built this as a Hulk-proof space. _We_ were an afterthought when you came up with the lullaby.”

Banner gave Stark a meek smile. “He’s not wrong.”

Rolling his eyes, Stark said, “Whatever. I’m decidedly unthrilled about Goth Barbie and Murderbot Ken being in such close proximity, and such close proximity to me. What happens if he decides to whammy this one?” and he pointed at Bucky. “We’re fucked.”

Romanov was watching this carefully, probably trying to figure out if intervention was required. As much harm as Bucky’d done her, she should be the one with the vendettas, not Stark, and it puzzled Bucky, but clearly intrigued the other prisoner: he was taking it in like it was the new hit Broadway play.

“Pretty sure Ken never had such long hair,” Hill said, amused by the discussion, crossing her arms over her chest. Bucky couldn’t help liking her—she was the kind of take-no-guff gal he’d always liked—or thought he’d liked, anyway, and she’d been fair to him since he’d approached her.

“Yeah, well, Ken wore a cock-ring around his neck at one point, so it seems like he’s flexible about his appearance,” Stark retorted, squinting at her.

“What even was your childhood?” Banner asked, incredulous.

“I think we ought to have these discussions upstairs,” Romanov finally weighed in. She was, out of all of them, the one Bucky knew he’d have to watch out for. Fury was ruthless but essentially honest, as was Hill; Stark and Banner were on Steve’s fighting squad and would therefore not risk alienating him; but Romanov, from what he recalled of the Black Widows, chose her allegiances based on expediency. Bucky respected that. She fought alongside Steve, but she wouldn’t hesitate to go against him if the necessity arose.

Stark pressed his fingertips to the wall and previously invisible touch-buttons lit faintly there, the cell door hummed to life, the shackles unlocked, and he motioned for Bucky to slide them through a little glowy-blue opening in the laser-protected doorway. Everything here must run on that same technology as his repulsors; aspects of it reminded Bucky unpleasantly of the Hydra tech.

 _This is your choice,_ Bucky reminded himself. _You’re safer here than anywhere else in the world on your own._ “I have no intention of escaping or hurting anyone,” he said, as unthreatening as he could be, but was met with a scoff from Stark; it seemed like Stark itched for him to try.

As they filed into the elevator, Fury said, “See, the good thing about him being your guest is that if something mysteriously happens to our new asset, I’ll know who to talk to.”

Stark glared. “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

That didn’t sound good. Bucky watched the elevator doors close and slunk back into the shadows. The space had a bed with a surprisingly soft mattress on it jutting from the wall, not easily dismantled even if he weren’t being watched 24/7. In a little gleaming white alcove were a toilet, shower stall, and sink; they looked less like a prison cell than the bathroom of a four-star hotel, replete with fluffy white towels. Three sets of clothing—soft, loose pajama-type pants, long-sleeved T-shirts, socks, and underwear—sat on a shelf next to a little table and chair, with slippers underneath. It was interesting that they’d installed a bed that couldn’t be taken apart, but had no qualms about putting other things in here he could easily use to break out with or hurt someone—dispensers and bottles, an electric razor, the holder for the toilet paper, a heavy hook on a wall with a hooded jacket. Romanov had explained the AI to him on the way down, so he supposed it made sense—they didn’t have much to fear from a low-tech human in a high-tech place.

He flicked his gaze toward the guy opposite him. His space had a similar setup, but there was something different about it, something Bucky couldn’t put his finger on. The guy leaned against a wall and crossed one ankle over the other, smiling like the Cheshire Cat.

“Hello there. I’m Loki. What are you in for?”

 

**Day 3**

Bucky was in the middle of a set of push-ups when he felt a sharp snap on his cheek, like getting hit with a rubber band. “What the fuck,” he snarled, a little black circle falling on the floor. He swept his hair off his face and picked it up: soft fabric, stretchy. Scowling, he looked over to see Loki smirking at him, still dressed in his fancy clothes.

They were provided anything they could want, and more than Bucky had expected: food arrived via a sort of high-tech dumbwaiter in one wall; if he wanted something to drink or a snack, all he had to do was ask JARVIS, the AI, who responded like a normal human. Television was projected from some lens in the wall, and he had access to tens of thousands of things to watch or listen to, or he could request books to read. Romanov, Hill, and Fury had spent hours debriefing him the past couple days. He truly didn’t mind waiting here while they searched for Steve—this was more like a hotel he just wasn’t allowed to leave. The only true downside had been finding out why Stark hated him so much: buried in one of Romanov’s Project Insight data dumps was information that pointed to the Soldier as the killer of Stark’s parents. The fact that Stark hadn’t murdered Bucky in retaliation either said a lot for his restraint or showed what kind of control Fury had over the Avengers.

Loki had tried more than a few times to strike up a conversation with Bucky, but after Bucky gave the curtest answer he could without being completely rude, he’d slink into the shadows again. Something about the way Loki’d said, “Ah yes, the _other_ man out of time,” when they’d met had given Bucky a shudder. Asgardian tech, he’d read, when he first found out about Steve being friends with the God of Thunder, was wrapped up in magic—Loki had mind-controlled one of the Avengers with some magical artifact. Bucky was doing his best to stay under this god’s radar: mischief was a hell of a lot scarier than thunder, and it didn’t matter if Loki’s cell was warded by magic or not, he wasn’t taking any damn chances.

Considering their proximity, staying under the radar wasn’t too successful.

“It’s for your hair,” Loki said, circling a finger around his head. “You keep pushing it off your face when you’re...sweating.”

“Oh.” Bucky shrugged, pulling his hair back to secure it. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. We have similar hair issues. It was annoying to watch you struggle with it repeatedly when a simple solution was at hand.”

Bucky frowned. The first day, Loki had offered an unasked-for explanation of how the cell wall worked; he’d poked a finger at the shimmer and it had transformed into a golden-red mesh curtain, as if in warning. “If you’re trapped there by some spell, how’d you get something into my cell?” He toweled sweat from his face, drank some water.

His cellie gave a peculiar little laugh: ducking his head shyly, his broad smile almost a grimace. That was always how he laughed, as though he’d spent most of his life trying to hold something back from everyone else, looking down on others. “It’s rather...above your level of understanding, I think.” An Asgardian had put him here, Loki’d explained, a warrior who was searching the realms for an also-missing Thor. Somehow she’d rounded up a human magician—which was pretty weird, but so was everything these days. “Suffice to say that while _I myself_ can’t pass through, it doesn’t stop me from conjuring something outside this.” He’d waved his hands widely.

Bucky started on a set of squats. It wasn’t his imagination that Loki was admiring his thighs and his ass, and he glowered. “Okay. So if you can conjure up stuff, why don’t you just conjure up something that will unlock that...curtain thing, and hasta luego. Or poke a hole in the wall and you just mosey on back to your realm. Seems like there’s lots of things you could do.”

“From your perspective, yes.” Loki dropped onto his bed and leaned against the wall, twisting his hand. A golden sphere appeared in his palm, and he began tossing it up and down in time with Bucky’s squats. “But you see, while the human mage Sif found may be an idiot, he had just enough intelligence to consider most contingencies.” He watched Bucky silently for a while, tossing the sphere, until Bucky’d finished his routine. “I’ll let you in on a secret—most magic has a finite life.”

“What does that mean?” Bucky asked, getting ready to step into the shower.

Loki sat up, arms on knees, a cryptic smile flitting over his lips, and the sphere vanished. “Even the Allfather’s magic—the most potent in the Realms—can’t last forever without its source, spells wear off unless renewed. As long as Sif chases Thor around the cosmos and this Strange character does...whatever he does, the spell gradually dissipates. Then all I need do is dismantle the device and leave. I’m in no hurry.”

“What’s strange about him?” Not that Bucky cared, but he was raised to be polite, and that sort of behavior was what distinguished him now from the Soldier.

“No, not—no, Strange, as in, that’s his name,” Loki said, exasperated. He made a tsk-ing sound. “Really, of all the places in the universe to suddenly find sorcerers, _Earth_. I mean, I ask you.”

Squinting, Bucky tried to get a handle on all this. “Your father is Odin, right? Your dad.” He’d been reading up on this in the files JARVIS gave him, trying to understand just what kind of people Steve had got himself involved with. Not that he understood any of it—he could barely understand himself at this point, space aliens were pretty much outside his lane.

“The one who raised me, yes, after he found me. Not my actual father.”

His Hydra captors always had treated Bucky like he was just some kind of killing machine, but he’d had to understand how to read people, to get in close to them sometimes. He knew what it meant when Loki looked to the right and then down as he said that. The guy was thousands of years old, but he seemed childlike then, vulnerable. Hurt and angry. And Bucky knew what a shit deal it was to suddenly find out you were someone else. But still. “Seems to me a guy raises you up, cares for you and gives you a good life, he’s your dad.”

Before Loki could respond, Bucky stepped into the shower alcove and turned the water on.

“You’re not afraid of me, are you?” Loki asked, loud enough to hear over the water. He seemed genuinely amused at the notion.

Bucky leaned out where he could see, shrugged. “I’m sure you can do some pretty terrible stuff to me. But in the scheme of things, what’s one more?”

 

**Day 5**

“You know, in all my visits here, I never fully realized how utterly boring this planet is. Usually, there’s a flurry of activity.” Probably because he was _usually_ bringing chaos and destruction with him. Loki set his cards on the little table and Bucky looked across the space, scowled. Teaching poker to a god of mischief might not have been a bright idea—you knew he was cheating, but it was impossible to prove.

“I don’t know. I’m getting three squares a day—really tasty ones—I’m helping their team put nails in Hydra’s coffin, there’s loads of interesting movies and music to catch up on, and the accommodations beat the hell out of the shitholes I was in before.” Come to think of it—his favorite Animal Planet shows were on in a few minutes, so he asked JARVIS for some popcorn and a Pepsi. “I got nowhere I’d rather be, at least till they find Steve.”

Loki didn’t seem to like TV much, he preferred scrolling through the music files, bouncing from genre to genre. That grated on Bucky’s nerves, so he’d asked him to use headphones; when Bucky had been getting into bed that night, he’d found a couple-hundred spiders under the blanket. As soon as Loki got the startled shout and horrified recoil he’d been waiting for, Loki’d cackled and magicked them away.

Bucky’d lain there sleepless, waiting for something else awful to happen. Eventually, he’d had a thought: Loki behaved like someone who’d never fit with his world. Sort of like Steve when he was little—few people had seen past his size, so he took the offensive because it was easier to push people away or be cruel first, before someone could push or hurt him. Sure, Steve had never unleashed genocidal monsters from another dimension as part of his offensive, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something similar eating at Loki. By avoiding Loki, turning his back on him for being what he was, Bucky would only encourage the tricks.

Introducing Loki to some things Bucky enjoyed was an easy enough way to show him he was on his side. So far, it was working pretty well—Loki had relaxed enough to ditch his suit and start wearing the clothes they provided, and he’d left off trying to get under Bucky’s skin and started sharing his own stories. Everything Loki did had a calculated goal behind it, but Bucky couldn’t fault that.

“And yet. Bored. I can see you checking your clock—your television programs are beginning, aren’t they?”

“You could always watch with me. My dad used to say that only boring people are bored.” He tilted his head to the side, brows raised.

“He sounds as much of an A-plus parent as Odin.”

So much for progress. “It was just something he said to get a rise out of us.” Bucky stood, moving away from the wall between their cells, flicking his hand to make the holographic cards and chips vanish. “My father was a wonderful man. I’ve read enough about myself lately to know that he was devastated when he lost me, and then lost Steve right after.”

He stepped away from Loki’s view, turning the screen on and reaching into the cubby for his snacks. The back of his neck itched; he sensed Loki standing at the magic wall, watching him, waiting. But he’d be damned if he’d turn.

There was a heavy sigh. “My sincere apologies, Bucky.” That probably didn’t happen very often. “I’m restless and should not take that out on you.”

Bucky waved his hand in the air to pause the program. “I appreciate it. If we weren’t separated, I’d invite you over for movie night.” A conciliation.

“Simple enough,” Loki said, and suddenly he—or maybe another he—appeared inside Bucky’s cell. Bucky blinked, took a step back.

“What...”

“Projection. Beginner level as an illusion, but it confuses the enemy effectively.” Right—the dossier had said he shape-shifted. There was a golden glow around him, and then he changed into a strange outfit—all green leather and gold, a pair of enormous horns springing forth from a helmet.

“Is that—how you normally look?” Bucky poked a finger in Loki’s chest, but it went right through.

“After a fashion.” Loki gave that strange grimace-grin and chuckled. The outfit made him seem otherworldly, which he supposed was as it should be. “You don’t like it.”

“No.” No wonder the Avengers were worried about him—spells and Asgard tech or not, there were things he could do they couldn’t predict, couldn’t fight. He could look like anyone or anything, move around in ways they couldn’t control. Guys like Stark and Banner would hate magic.

“Perhaps this works better,” Loki purred, and abruptly Steve was standing before him, wearing his old wartime uniform—the outfit Steve had worn to try to pull Bucky out of the Winter Soldier, pull him back from the past. How the hell could Loki even know about that? “Something familiar, more pleasing to the eye and...a heart.”

With a sharp shake of his head, Bucky gritted out, “Yeah, no. Don’t do that.”

“I thought you wanted to see the captain again.”

“Don’t.”

“Ah, it’s like that, is it?” he said, inclining his head, giving Bucky a curious stare.

He turned away from Loki, angry now, and the imaginary Steve disappeared, leaving him alone. Bucky pulled on a new pair of pajama bottoms and yanked the jacket’s hood over his head, adjusted the viewscreen at an angle, and climbed into bed.

 

**Day 7**

“Go left. No, your left, not mine,” Loki snapped. “Over that way.”

“I heard you the first time,” Bucky growled. He really wasn’t comfortable up here in the living areas, especially with a ghostly fake Stark following along behind him like a handler. Loki kept shifting projections of different people and it was singeing his last nerve.

Romanov had come down to glare at the two of them earlier in the day and asked Loki, “Could Steve be with Thor? Is that why we still can’t find him?”

“I am very much not my brother’s keeper,” was all Loki had said. “I haven’t seen him since just after the Convergence.”

Whatever the hell that meant. Ignoring Loki, she’d turned to Bucky. “Then I’m considering the real possibility that...something has happened to him and Sam.” He’d already dumped on her every possible Hydra location still in operation, but he’d been forced to agree—it was profoundly unlike Steve to go dark for this long, for no particular reason that anyone on his squad was aware of, and with someone else who didn’t have powers. There might be cells he hadn’t known of, or possibly someone completely outside of Hydra’s influence. She’d promised him they would work on it while the Avengers were on an op, but that had started Bucky on a panicky spiral of dire scenarios.

To take Bucky’s mind off worrying and force him to stop pacing, Loki had quizzed him on history and customs, told him stupid and hilarious Thor stories, but they’d eventually run out of amusements. “Don’t catastrophize. I have an idea.” It wasn’t just Loki’s charm and that silky voice that had convinced Bucky to escape his cell and be Loki’s hands while they prowled around the Avengers-less building: he really had needed something more to do than read or watch movies if he wasn’t to concoct grisly scenarios of why he’d never see Steve again. In a better situation he’d have been immune to Loki’s coercion—and his irritating insistence on theatrically popping into his cell as every manner of person or animal.

“They built this to withstand the monster,” Bucky had said when Loki had presented his plan, peering behind a recessed panel where the video screen came out. He’d thought he should be ashamed of himself for violating their trust, that he’d keep his word and not escape, but...Loki was a bad influence. And kind of fun. “But the monster doesn’t have slim metal fingers and an ability to problem-solve.” Loki had grinned; it made him look so young and handsome. Bucky had kept poking around till he discovered a narrow shelf for conduit—he’d shorted the door’s power panel, the arc reactor’s light fading to black, and threw Loki a triumphant glance. When he stepped out of his cell, Loki had clapped his hands together, and it was off to the races.

Loki had done some sort of weird juju on JARVIS’s camera feeds, all the security sensors, so they were able to stroll around without creeping; having someone who could project himself in first meant Bucky didn’t have to clear a room. Handy, that.

The tower was an interesting place: part offices, part living quarters, part research facility. Steve had an entire floor to himself—they all did, and he found he envied Steve this modern life, just a little. “Change much since you trashed the place?” Bucky asked as he tiptoed into Stark’s lab, and at the silence, he turned to find Loki’s projection gone. Was it something he’d said? He poked at some equipment on a table—wings, Bucky realized, exactly like the ones he’d torn off Steve’s friend Sam. His mouth twisted, his throat tightened. They should have just dumped him in a black-site prison, not given him—

An enormous Loki-face suddenly pushed its way out of the high left wall. “Right over there.”

“Jesus! Do _not_ do that. Fuck me sideways, that’s creepy.”

Loki manifested into a regular-size version of himself with a body, shimmery and transparent, arching an eyebrow at “fuck me.”

“What am I looking for?” Bucky asked.

“Just having a little fun with Stark.”

Bucky groaned. “Thought this was recon to keep me from going stir-crazy, maybe a food run. I killed the guy’s parents, I’m not sure I want to mess with him that way.”

“Nonsense,” Loki said distractedly, scanning the room, running his fingers along things even though he couldn’t really touch them. “If I’m given to understand correctly, you were not the one who chose to kill them. Open that cabinet—over there.”

Doing as told, he checked the contents. It was mostly just packets of dried food: fruits, primarily, though it reminded him of safe houses where they’d stashed him, shelves full of dried everything. “What are we gonna do?” Bucky asked with trepidation.

“Leave that to me,” Loki said. That...was not a comfort. But at least Loki wasn’t Hydra, he wasn’t expecting to use Bucky’s hands to commit some war crime. Opening doors wasn’t a crime, not yet.

“You ever heard the parable about the scorpion and the frog?” Bucky inquired.

“Hm, no. I’m unfamiliar,” and Loki unexpectedly vanished again. Sighing, Bucky took the elevator up to wait for him to reappear. Loki did come back, just as Bucky entered a cavernous space that looked like a nightclub. It had a full bar; multiple levels of catwalks, stairs, and mezzanines; dozens of couches and chairs and tables; two pool tables, some arcade video games, and pinball machines. Why would Steve leave all this to go crawling around some third-world country that didn’t even have cellphone service when he could be goofing off here in between jobs?

Loki glided up beside him as he surveyed the room. Bucky exhaled. “So, scorpion asks a frog to help him cross a river, but the frog thinks he’ll get stung and says no. Frog only agrees to help after the scorpion promises not to sting, because it’d kill them both. But scorpion stings him before the end of the ride, and when the frog asks why the scorpion has killed them both, it says, ‘Because it’s my nature.’ See, when you talk about having a little fun, I think your idea of that and other people’s is”—he held his arms wide—“a little different.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Loki gave that wicked death’s-head grin and wagged a finger. The silliness of his ridiculous pajama bottoms and Stark Industries T-shirt in no way mitigated Loki’s underlying aura of danger.

Since Bucky could see in the dark quite well— _thanks, serum_ —and Loki was...well, basically an apparition, he hadn’t bothered to turn on any lights. When the main floor lights popped on, he whirled, ready to fight.

Maria Hill was standing there, in _her_ pajamas and giant purple fuzzy slippers, rubbing sleep from her eyes, squinting. Her eyes flicked from Bucky to Loki and back, whatever had brought her here suddenly forgotten. She took in their state of dress, their bare feet, blinking a few times. Bucky threw a sidelong glance at Loki—he hadn’t vanished or changed into someone else, merely smiled unctuously though he was as paralyzed as Bucky, and Hill turned to go. “...Okay,” was all she said as she waved a hand in front of the light sensor, her face the picture of _I don’t get paid enough for this_ as the doors closed.

“Anyway.” Bucky was still side-eyeing Loki. “I guess it’s your nature, but I’m not necessarily comfortable with all this. Have you ever heard—”

“Whatever you’re about to say, I’m sure I haven’t and doubt I need to.”

Rolling his eyes, Bucky explained, “I’m just saying. It’s just hard for me to do things to people who’re helping me. I don’t exactly have a handle on my past, but I’m pretty sure I was a nice guy. Before they...got to me.”

“I’ve studied the oaf’s new friends.” Loki always called Thor “the oaf” or some variation. “ _Particularly_ your captain, and he isn’t the type to devote himself so wholly to someone who is not...nice. What an insipid word.”

Bucky gave him the finger behind his back. “Like a fella who’d wipe his father’s memory and dump him in an old folks’ home, maybe. Or maybe I’m just sensitive to the memory-wiping thing.”

Loki stared at him out of one eye. “Odin has always been capable of breaking my enchantments.” He shrugged and went over to the bar, motioning at Bucky to come be his hands. “All I ever wanted from the time I was little was to have a chance at the throne—merely a chance, and I believed I did—if my brother was killed in battle, say. Then I found out that I wasn’t Asgardian, so farewell to that dream.” He had a thousand-yard stare. “Then I may have...tried to destroy my actual home world, so that ruined my chances to rule there.”

“You must be fun at parties.”

With an exasperated sigh, Loki added, “While Thor was out do-gooding with his new friends, it seemed like my chance to rule, at least for a while, until Odin would break the spell and return. But Heimdall and Sif stepped in.” He pointed at a pink cake box. “What’s in that?”

“Who’s Heimdall?” Bucky asked as he opened it. _Oh wow._ “Cupcakes. They look delicious.” Cupcakes were a thing now, he’d learned, there were shops everywhere, and they were for adults, not just kids’ birthdays anymore. They were beautifully decorated, in all sorts of festive colors.

“Bring them along. And some of the liquor. Any other sweets you may find, as well; I’m weary of the standard fare.”

“So that’s our big adventure—stealing little cakes?” How absurdly small-stakes this was; they could just as easily have had JARVIS call out for baked goods. This was as far from the Winter Soldier as he could get—maybe that was the point. Maybe this was Loki’s self-improvement plan. “No guts, no glory, I suppose,” Bucky said acidly and Loki favored him with a look of disgust.

“Without the criminal element, it’s dull.” Bucky rooted around in the shelves and found a tray to pile the goodies on, as well as some packets of snacks and more of Stark’s weird dried fruit. “To answer your previous query, Heimdall usually controls the Bifrost,” Loki explained. “He’s the oaf’s best friend, and has the gift of seeing everything in the universe. Unfortunately, that makes it hard to get the jump on him. When I tried to...er, take him out of the picture, he escaped. Hence my incarceration here.”

“So, public enemy number one.” Bucky hit the elevator Down button with his elbow.

That made Loki chuckle. “I rather like that. Yes. Although to be honest, your unpredictable arrival here has made my stay so much more enjoyable. I’d have probably made some effort to leave early, but you’re a good cellmate. And you have a pleasing form.”

“Thanks. I think.” They were almost to the subbasement when Bucky asked, “Though how do I get this stuff into your cell to share?”

Loki shook his head, as if to say “no problem.” He’d conjured plenty of things besides hair ties into Bucky’s space the past few days, usually as peace offerings after he’d annoyed him. Including, at one point, popping in a kitten, until Bucky had pointed out there really wasn’t a good way for him to care for it, and Loki’d magicked it away. Still, Bucky’d appreciated the thought.

In the end, though, they used the existing systems to share the bounty—Bucky sent stuff up in the dumbwaiter thingie, Loki did some mojo to transfer it, and it came back down into his little cubby. They sat across from each other on their respective floors, stuffing their faces with goodies and Stark’s snacks as Bucky described classic human pranks like short-sheeting the bed, to Loki’s utter disdain. “And this is the life you want so desperately to remember?” Loki asked, licking frosting off a lemon-blueberry cupcake. “Norns, I’d run as fast as my tiny human legs could carry me.”

 

 

**Day 8**

“I like this one,” Loki said, tossing the bottle of aquavit in Bucky’s lap, “but I don’t like this one.” He snapped his fingers and the sambuca vanished. “It is vile.”

“Hey, I wanted to try that,” Bucky said, blinking, pawing at thin air. "You're like a damn cat." This was closer to drunk than he’d been since he’d been captured in Italy in ’43, and it was _fantastic._ Loki was pretty hammered, too, by the looks of it, but he’d had a bit of a head start, since Bucky’d been a little too jumpy to start the party when Loki—the real version—had stepped into his cell. Just as he’d said, the spell had weakened enough that it was child’s play for Loki to cut through the rest of the tech. They must have been confident they’d find Thor before the spell ran out of juice.

He was sitting on the floor while Loki was on the bed, and he craned his head up and back so he could look Loki in the eye. “Where’s that...oh, you know...the green stuff? You’re a hog.” Instead of the absinthe, Loki offered him the bottle of rye, short-stopping it to chug a good quarter down before passing it off to Bucky. Asgardians—Frost Giants—whatevers were _rude_. Stuffing the last cupcake in his mouth, Bucky washed it down with the rye. Not a pleasing combination.

Now that they could move around, he should really get outside the building and find out what else that bakery might have. Whenever Loki decided to actually ditch this planet, they’d probably double down on the security for Bucky—or maybe by then they’d find Steve, and it wouldn’t matter.

“Bucky,” Loki was saying, tapping him on the metal shoulder.

“What?” He snapped back to fuzzy-headed reality.

“Why do you scratch and dig at yourself like that? I’ve noticed you do it a great deal.”

He pulled his hand away from his clavicle, staring at his fingers as they seemed to grow larger and smaller, back and forth. _Oh yeah, you are definitely drunk now._ It was kind of great. “Sorry.”

Shaking his head rapidly, Loki pointed a finger and waved it around in a circle. _Stop apologizing and speak._

“It’s like...a constant burn, an ache, under my skin. Where it’s fused with the metal.” He wasn’t sure how to describe it, really. Asgardians probably didn’t have the same kinds of aches and pains and little tics humans did.

His eyebrows tented in confusion. “May I?” he asked, low and gentle, but before Bucky could figure out that was a question, he pressed his palm to Bucky’s forehead.

It was like being hit with a sledgehammer right between his eyes, as though it knocked his brain right out of his skull. He was in the surgical room of Zola’s house of horrors, back in Moscow after the war. Everything unspooled in slow-motion, in flashes of searing memory: the assistants in their gray lab coats creeping around him, their huge needles directed at his flesh like weapons; Zola, his face partially covered with a mask, looming; the metal arm being carried to him as he turned to look, trying to crawl off the table but paralyzed by their drugs. Waking up to see Zola smirking at him; staring at his hands, one flesh and bone, one metal, unfamiliar, horrifying. The first time he’d sat in the chair, the sparks from the halo arcing delicately to the floor like dying fireflies. All of it somewhere dark and fathomless, blurred at the edges like old tintypes, a strobing white light that swept past to illuminate each moment of trauma, disorienting him. Bucky didn’t know where to look, every place his eyes landed featured some horror and that brilliant, pure light trying to blind him. Silent except for the drumbeat of his heart.

Then it was gone, his head snapped back, and he was looking at Loki. Bucky had no weapons, but he at least had the arm, and he leapt up, striking out for Loki’s throat. But he was faster even than Bucky, even than Steve had been when they’d fought, and as he crossed his arms in front, two long knives appeared to shoot from his hands.

“What the fuck,” Bucky panted. The adrenaline coursing through him killed the alcohol buzz immediately.

Loki held one hand up in peace, the knife evanescing away. “Forgive me for startling you, I only hoped to see what caused your distress. Sit down, I won’t harm you.”

He remained standing. With a deep sigh, the other knife disappeared and Loki tapped the seat next to him and said, “I assure you, I meant no harm. You’re not exactly forthcoming about your past, which led me to believe you’d never actually tell me more than I already know about the—” and he touched the left forearm.

“Because it’s not your business,” he spat. Bucky took the bottle of absinthe Loki held out as an offering, but he wasn’t ready to sit down again. He’d like to toss him out of his cell, right on his princely ass, but knew he didn’t stand a chance against alien powers.

“Ymir’s balls—this planet is abhorrent! They called themselves scientists, doctors, yet they did that to you. Sadists and butchers.”

Bucky took a long pull from the bottle. “I don’t need you to feel sorry for me.”

“No, but you _could_ use a friend. Especially one who can help you with that butchery of a shoulder and the turmoil they left in your head. It’s why you were looking for the captain, isn’t it?”

Glaring at Loki, Bucky sat back down on the floor, tilting the bottle and letting the booze flow down his throat. “A friend, like the way you’re a friend to your brother, you mean? Or the people on Asgard? How ’bout the New Yorkers and SHIELD guys who didn’t make it out of the alien attack?”

Loki met the taunting with a cheerless laugh. “How much does your arm hurt? And don’t lie, I could see that it hurt.”

“Enough. But there’s nothing to be done about it, not by me.” What was he going to do, carve it out of his body? All these months on his own, peeling himself up off the floor, working his way back to human, but he was still a wreck.

Loki scoffed, imperious as always. “Take off your shirt.”

“Excuse me?” Bucky snapped.

“I’m not— _seducing you_. Or more precisely, not yet—I told you, you’re pleasing, but that’s not what I’m after at this moment.” He jerked his chin up, a prince who was used to bossing people around. “If it helps...” and his own T-shirt vanished.

The guy had a nice body, Bucky’d give him that. But there was an enormous scar in the center of his torso, and then he slowly turned a mottled bluish color, the features of his face going sharper. “My true form.”

Bucky closed his eyes, weighing whether this was a wise idea, before squinting up at Loki. With a grudging hand-wave, he pulled his T-shirt off, sitting there in his silly cat pajamas next to a god who enjoyed sowing chaos. He’d been herded around naked in front of dozens of people, his body a tool for them to examine and remark upon and violate, yet he felt more exposed here with Loki than he ever had with Hydra.

Stretching a blue arm over, Loki circled his hand around Bucky’s shoulder, closing his melancholy blue eyes. “It’s worse than I’d imagined. They went into your skeletal system, didn’t they?” His voice was poisonous with disdain and anger. “No wonder your nerves are on fire. It’s an abomination.” All around the metal socket, the skin and muscles began to cool, then colder and colder—but not an unpleasant cold like the cryochamber or a Siberian wind. Something soothing and almost...it felt like drinking cool, clear water after wandering a hot desert. It was relief.

“That’s...” Bucky wasn’t sure what to say.

“Of course you’re speechless, no one’s done a decent thing for you for decades,” and with a sad smile, Loki returned to his familiar appearance. “It won’t last, I’m afraid, not past my leaving. But for now, it should ease the discomfort.”

“Thanks. I mean, thank you,” was all Bucky could manage. It was the kindest thing anyone had done for him since—well, since Steve had pulled the Winter Soldier out of the shell of Bucky Barnes. “You wanna tell me about that?” and he nodded at Loki’s chest.

“Not particularly.” It made Bucky wonder if that was what had led Loki’s brother to believe he was dead; he’d made it sound like a boyish prank, but there was clearly a bigger story in that wound.

A red light flickered in the corner of the room and they both turned. Loki waved a hand and a sort of floating picture came up, like the televisions, but just hanging there in front of them. Something he’d conjured up on his own. “Oh, this will be fun.”

It was like Loki’d put a camera in the lab—Tony Stark appeared in the center of it. Oh no. “What did you do to him?”

“Trifles—nothing at all,” Loki scorned Bucky’s concern. “Left a few snakes.” Okay, not nearly as bad as he’d expected— “And I took advantage of his second-greatest vanity after his intellect: I made everything in his laboratory, living quarters, and the communal spaces six of your...inches taller.” Bucky tried not to, but he couldn’t stop himself from chuckling into the bottle.

“That’s not mischief, that’s evil.” He took a drink. “He is pretty tiny, though.”

“Not even close. If I truly wanted evil, believe me, I could have done something deliciously monstrous. This is...harmless.”

Stark was trying to settle himself down into a chair, adjusting it first for what he obviously thought was up, then down, then up again, before stopping and scowling at the table. Try as he might to hold the laughter back, Bucky couldn’t—Stark was visibly agitated, moving around his space like he had never seen it before, checking himself over. It had been like this in the war, Bucky recalled with a warmth in his chest. Steve and him and their squad had played pranks on each other to ease the stress.

Eventually, Stark seemed to give up and asked JARVIS just what the hell was going on, and the AI responded with “I don’t got no fuckin’ idea” in a Brooklyn accent so heavy it sounded exactly like his cousin Louie back in the ’30s.

“Oh man, that’s just...” and he laughed silently, watching the rest of the show as Stark rushed to his living space, looking wildly around, calling for Maria Hill. By the time he made it to the big common room, glaring with rage at the almost-empty bar shelves, Ms. Hill had arrived.

“Did you shrink?” she asked him, looking at the bar, the furniture, then him. “Wait, _did I_ shrink, too?”

“Hardy har,” Stark sneered. “What the hell happened while I was gone? JARVIS sounds like Yogi Berra and everything’s suddenly grown”—he stabbed a threatening finger in the air—“do not say ‘except me’ if you want to keep your job.” He tapped at the watch thing on his wrist. “I’m calling Pepper...” but Hill held up a hand. Her brow rose eloquently.

Bucky leaned an arm on Loki’s knee and said, “I still feel kind of bad about this, and she’s gonna rat us both out. I did turn myself in, you know. They’ve been pretty hospitable.”

Loki wrinkled his nose. “You feel too much guilt about everything, even events that weren’t your fault. It does no good. You can’t change the past, and besides—the Winter Soldier’s actions were not your crimes.”

“Maybe,” Bucky said sadly, drawing a finger through the frosting on his lavender-rhubarb cupcake and sticking it in his mouth. “But they were done with my hands.” Loki gave him a pitying glance.

On the...whatever it was they were looking through, Stark reached into a cabinet, probably for one of those bags of dried berries he seemed to never be without, and came out with a handful of snakes. He and Hill both shrieked in surprise, and the snakes flew from his hand, then fell to the floor, slithering away as Stark stared. “Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes.” He looked at Ms. Hill. “So now we know who’s responsible.”

“I saw Barnes and Loki in here last night. I guess they raided the bar.”

“And you didn’t think to stop ’em before they cut a swath through the building, or I don’t know, tell someone before they did something really dangerous? What the fuck did we put them there for if they’re just going to escape?”

She shrugged. “They didn’t seem to be doing anything harmful, and I’m pretty sure Loki wasn’t controlling the Winter Soldier. He was just...Barnes. It’s hard to see them as a threat when they’re wearing pajamas and carrying pink cake boxes.”

“They took the damn cupcakes?” Apparently, that offended him more greatly than the snakes in his dried fruit. “Those were for a meeting today.”

“I’m sure you can send the same underling to get more,” Hill said, drolly amused. “Stark, the only person Loki seems interested in doing anything to is you. You two have a weird dynamic. Of course he would escape to provoke you—and Barnes seems largely harmless. They’re probably just bored and restless.”

“Well, then, why don’t I just book them the penthouse suite at the Park Hyatt? He murdered Coulson in cold blood, if you recall.” That made her go still, icy. After throwing her a narrow look, Stark stalked away, muttering under his breath, and Loki twisted his wrist to end the picture. They sat silently, Loki possibly waiting for judgment, but that was definitely not something Bucky was able to deliver to anyone, all things considered.

Still, he wasn’t at all surprised when Stark appeared in front of his cell a few minutes later, wordlessly staring at them, chewing the inside of his cheek. Bucky got the distinct impression that he’d readied some indignant, meticulously reasoned and absolutely unassailable speech about what irredeemable murderous bastards they were until he found them there, shirtless and laughing, the empty bakery box and a number of bottles littering the floor of Bucky’s cell.

“Join us?” Loki asked, conjuring a martini.

“The whole _point_ of being imprisoned while we find your respective minders is to _be prisoners_. To stay in your _prison cell._ ”

Tossing back the martini, Loki supplied helpfully, “I fail to see the issue—I am in the cell, therefore I am still a prisoner.”

A vein throbbed mesmerizingly in Stark’s forehead, and he glared hotly at Bucky, challenging him. Around a mouthful of frosting, Bucky said, “I liked the cupcakes.” He swallowed. “No Steve?”

“Not that you deserve to know, T2, but Romanov and Barton are still looking.”

Loki and Bucky looked at each other and shrugged. Honestly, he didn’t understand half the things Stark said.

Stark closed his eyes. “You know what, I can’t even,” and he turned quickly on his heels, back into the elevator. Just before the doors shut, he stuck a hand out to hold them open, barking, “Put it all back.” The doors almost closed before the hand shot forward again. “And stop stealing my blueberries!”

Turning to him, Loki said, “I suppose now you’re positively wallowing in guilt.”

He was a little twingey at being such a prick. “I think it’s pretty rough for him to come down here. To look at me.” Bucky sighed. “Are you really telling me that the toll doesn’t affect you? That even just...what you’ve done to your father and your brother doesn’t keep you up at night?”

“Certainly, I feel those things. But guilt is a useless emotion, it doesn’t change the past. Now I put my efforts into less harmful pursuits. Mostly.” But there was something in his eyes, some ancient grief and shame that Bucky recognized all too well. “I like you, Bucky, despite your human nature. You’re an honorable man made to do dishonorable things.”

“Is this you hitting on me now?”

Loki laughed hard, smoothing his hair back. “That’s a discussion for another time, and I should be open to that discussion. As I said, you have a pleasing form. But that’s not why I make you this offer: come with me when I leave here. See the universe, how vast it is—it will change your perspective on your past, I assure you. Let me take you to Asgard and our healers. Make that permanent,” he said, touching Bucky’s scars.

“And if you get to rule in place of your dad or your brother for a little while...”

“You have me there.” Loki’d said once that he longed for home. And he had one to go back to, in some form or another, unlike Bucky, who couldn’t return to his past, to the Brooklyn he knew. “Be my traveling companion, like that ridiculous program you’ve been watching, that doctor or whatever he calls himself.”

“Who.”

“The one who travels through the universe in a box.”

“No, I know what you mean, his name is—okay, listen, never mind.” Loki frowned at Bucky, completely bewildered by the conversational detour. “Let’s be honest—me with you would be less _companion_ and more _master and pet_."

“You wound me.” He held his arms out, smirking and grandiose. “Think about it—one of the first humans to travel the realms. Your mind healed, your heart eased, a reminder that there might be joy in the universe. Better than anything on your television. And I enjoy your company.”

“Do I get to keep the kitty pajamas?” he asked, flapping the legs. At Loki’s vulpine grin, Bucky shook his head. “It’s a generous offer. But I need to think about it. There’s still Steve to consider.” Steve was the one thing Bucky’d lost he could still get back, and that wasn’t something to ignore. If Steve was in peril, they’d need Bucky’s help.

Loki looked disappointed, but not angry. Who ever would have thought a mind-wiped assassin could become friends with a Norse god? The future was funny. “Don’t think too long. I have a sense my days here are numbered.”

 

**Day 9**

They must have passed out at some point, because Bucky woke to the lights gradually coming on the way they did in the morning, simulating sunrise. He rubbed his crusty eyes and looked over at Loki, reclined regally on Bucky’s bed, all the pillows from both their cells tucked up behind him. The serum had made it more work to get drunk, but it had also given him the ability to drink _a lot_ and not wake with a hangover.

Thunder rumbled in the distance as he drank a couple glasses of water in quick succession. It took him a few seconds to realize they shouldn’t be able to hear a thunderstorm this far underground; it was usually silent, the only sound the faint hiss of the air system.

Loki cracked one eye open, his face tensing. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

“Storm?” Bucky put a fresh shirt on, even though he was going to step in the shower as soon as Loki hauled himself up and went to his own cell.

Rubbing his forehead, Loki said, “And what usually follows the oaf around.” All of a sudden a gold shimmer traversed Loki’s body and he was dressed in the green leathers and that horn helmet, standing in front of Bucky all vivid and godlike. With a wicked grin, he leaned forward and gave Bucky a quick kiss as he began to speak, startling him into silence.

Voices, commotion followed the rumbles, leaking through the elevator shaft, and Bucky thought _that must be the god of—_ “Lo-KIIII!” Thor thundered as Loki winced, vanishing just as the elevator doors opened.

Bucky had been torn between staying there to wait for Steve or taking Loki up on his offer, but his indecision had cost him the chance. They hadn’t even said goodbye. He was readying himself to face the angry new god when an arm appeared out of the wall of his cell, followed by Loki’s face. _Still really creepy._ “Now or never,” Loki said, saucy and come-hither.

“Yeah, all right,” Bucky said. Maybe they could find Steve themselves. The hand snatched him by his collar and he was enveloped by sparkly rainbow lights inside a swirling vortex, tucked up tight to Loki’s side, velocity whipping his hair back.

“I may not be a good man, Bucky,” Loki said over the roar of the vortex, “but I make this vow: I will _not_ sting you.”

With a laugh, Bucky responded, “No guts, no glory,” as they shot through the star-filled sky.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, you can reblog our master post [on tumblr](https://teatotally.tumblr.com/post/185158118365/cellies-9079-words-by-gwyneth-rhys).
> 
> Thanks to speranza and monicawoe for giving me some great prompts!


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